The Ride has begun.
It’s officially Christmas Day — somewhere — and Santa has begun making his annual rounds.
The jolly old elf can be tracked online, as he has for years now, via NORAD and Google’s Santa Tracker.
NORAD’s tracker — aka the North American Aerospace Defense Command — has been up and running for 65 years. Google is newer to the game, arriving in 2004.
Either one will help kids locate The Big Guy — whether he’s flying over the Indian Ocean or nearing Africa or Europe.
And certainly, on Christmas Eve in the U.S., they’ll be on higher alert.
It’s obviously not an exact science.
As of 8 a.m. Christmas Eve, NORAD had Santa over Kurilsk in the Kuril Islands, having delivered more than 600 million presents. Google had him over Lae in Papua New Guinea, but only with 50 million gifts out of his bag.
Normally, NORAD’s operations include around 150 volunteers at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs manning the phones, taking calls from kids asking for Santa’s location. This year, however, the pandemic has cut that back to fewer than 10 people per two-hour shift.
